“It’s transformational.”

How Yahoo Legal and ThinkSmart teamed up to automate Legal Ops processes on a global scale.

Overview

Yahoo Legal had more than 150 legal professionals addressing 30+ areas of the law on a 24/7 basis for a truly global corporation, with thousands of vital Legal Operations workflows underway at any given moment. So it had an urgent need to automate Legal Ops processes.

The Challenge?

“We needed a business automation solution that was flexible and had a light footprint,” explains Jeff Franke, Senior Director of Legal Operations at Yahoo. “It’s essential that my team use and manage the platform with near zero support. And we needed a solution that was Cloud-based.”

The Solution: Automate Legal Ops processes with TAP

Yahoo Legal turned to TAP, seeing it would let them implement workflows quickly while reducing the need to involve its lawyers in any number of processes. Working side-by-side with ThinkSmart, they created a development roadmap for customizing TAP to their exact needs.

“TAP lets us automate any process in any area, whether it’s HR, Finance, or Sales. This is a very powerful way to improve efficiency and reduce costs,” says Jeff Franke.

The Benefits

TAP’s ease of adoption and simplicity of use meant Yahoo Legal could automate Legal Ops processes immediately after launch.

TAP allowed addition of workflow-related notes that can be modified without impacting the auditability of requests and approvals, helping with SOX compliance.

It also automates spend approval processes for engaging outside counsel, from identifying legal matters to creating budgets and accessing approvals.

TAP now powers a global self-service NDA portal using TAP covering 20+ countries and leveraging Chinese characters, used by hundreds of employees annually while freeing lawyers and paralegals from costly involvement in hundreds of transactions.